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THE last Israel Defense Forces soldier has left the Gaza Strip. Israel won – for now. But feckless political leadership may have cost Israel a durable victory.

Israel’s cause was just, and a response was necessary. Terror can’t be tolerated. Unfortunately, Israel’s decision to halt military operations prematurely does amount to tolerating terror.

The core leadership of Hamas was allowed to survive. Amid the ruins, cowardly terrorists emerged from their bunkers to declare victory simply because they’re still breathing.

Israel now must answer a moral question about the conflict – although not in the Hamas-hugging form the global left has posed.

The question isn’t whether the death and destruction was criminal – it wasn’t. Hamas, not Israel, ignited this miniature war.

Rather, the question is whether the amount of damage the IDF did was useful, given that Israel’s leaders were unwilling to go all the way. Had the bloodthirsty Hamas bosses been killed, every bit of collateral damage would have been justified.

Had Israel been willing to go all the way, every loss on either side would have been justified. But Israel’s government chickened out again.

The IDF performed superbly, redeeming its reputation after the 2006 Lebanon debacle. But Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s government, after an encouraging start, reverted to its past spinelessness – a failure of nerve that served Israelis and Palestinians badly.

After the basic issue of whether a war is just comes the question of whether the war’s results justify the costs. Had Israel continued to focus on smashing Hamas and killing its leaders, this would have qualified, readily, as a just war from start to finish.

But now we just don’t know if this truncated conflict will produce desirable long-term consequences, or if a convalescent Hamas will continue ruling Gaza with the gun and eventually resume its terror-rocket campaign.

Hamas has suffered a painful setback, physically, politically and psychologically. But it may not have been hurt enough. Hardcore terrorists take a lot of killing.

Israel showed what it can do. But strategic exhibitionism goes only so far.

Two possible scenarios lie ahead. First, Hamas may have lost so much credibility that it can’t maintain its grip on the population, allowing less-radical Palestinians (if only there were an alternative to the corrupt, discredited Fatah) to play a greater role in Gaza’s future. If Gaza’s people manage to reject terror, this war will have been worthwhile.

Alternatively, if Hamas retains the power to press ahead with its program to further radicalize Gaza and provide a second Iranian bridgehead on Israel’s border, this war will have been an ugly, costly failure.

When will Israel (or the United States) learn that you can’t make war halfway? If we have to fight, we must aim for a no-nonsense victory, no matter the cost. And yes, victory remains possible, despite the intelligentsia’s nonsense to the contrary.

Whether we look at the Bush administration’s willingness to march to Baghdad, only to shy from the costs of mastering Baghdad, or Israel’s recent foray into Gaza, the strategic imperatives are obvious: Formulate clear war aims, pile on with everything you’ve got – and don’t quit until you’ve achieved decisive results.

That’s Military Basics 101. But few politicians take that course these days.

Israel’s government does have plenty of excuses for halting its offensive. It didn’t want to be on the blame-line for President Obama’s first foreign-policy crisis. A war prosecuted to the finish would have cost much higher casualties. And Israel faces elections in a few weeks.

But the bottom line is that, if Israel wasn’t ready to go all the way, it shouldn’t have gone in at all. For a rule-of-law democracy to embark on a war about which it isn’t completely serious is a crime.

Perhaps the end result of all this will be positive. International donors are lining up to offer the Palestinians billions to rebuild, but refusing (for now) to channel the money through Hamas. Perhaps aid will do what Israel left undone.